Social media marketing has been taking some punches lately. First, IBM produced a report illustrating the complete lack of influence the medium had on shopping behavior for Black Friday. Couple that with a recent op-ed piece featured on Mashable where Todd Wasserman asserts that 'most social media marketing is a waste of time', and you've got a prominent one-two combo which has social media advocates reeling. After all, it's hard to argue with data. To illustrate the issue even further, let's not forget Forrester's research from September where they showed that social media influences less than 1% of online purchases. That's a mountain, but even after all this evidence, I still say you can't count social media marketing out. Yet. Here's why: